Early in the text, Starr mentions that the Carter home has framed pictures of Malcolm X alongside black Jesus, even calling her family “Christlims”: a mashup of Christian and Muslim.
Maverick Carter’s reverence of Malcolm X is addressed more fully after gunshots are fired into the Carter home while the family is watching television. Starr believes the gunshots were a message to her to keep silent about her knowledge of Khalil’s murder at the hands of a white police officer. Lisa, Starr’s mother, remarks that Starr’s safety is of paramount importance, even more than her standing up for the truth.
In response, Maverick instructs his children to recite the Black Panthers’s Ten Point Program. Malcolm X was a leader and proponent of the Black Panthers’s philosophy that police brutality must be stopped by “any means necessary.” By asking his children to recite this maxim after the attack on their home, Maverick asserts that standing up for injustice is always worth it, even if it means facing threats to one’s personal safety. Maverick does not want his children to be afraid of doing the right thing, regardless of the risks involved.
The reader can thereby infer that Malcolm X is so important to Maverick because he represents a radical Afro-centric viewpoint that empowers black people to stand up for their own rights. Unlike many civil rights figures who have maintained notoriety in the present day, Malcolm X did not directly condemn force as a tool for the oppressed in their fight for equality. This shows that Maverick values Malcolm X for his dedication to the black community above all else. Maverick is unconcerned with kowtowing to the pressures within and outside of Garden Heights that try to hinder achieving the goal of ending police brutality. He wants his children to feel empowered to speak out against injustice even if the price is violence or death.
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